The present disclosure relates generally to semiconductor fabrication systems and, more particularly, to a system and method for notifying entities that semiconductor design changes have occurred.
From the time the primary integrated circuit (IC) was invented, the semiconductor industry has grown dramatically to today's ultra-large scale IC's (ULSIC's) by technological progress in materials, design, processing, and equipment.
Semiconductor technologies are complicated because they involve systems, design, equipment, material, manufacturing, testing, and packaging. Another reason for the complexity of semiconductor technologies is that they involve so many diverse technical areas including logic, analog, mixed signal, radio frequency (RF), memory (such as dynamical random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), and magnetic random access memory (MRAM)), micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS), and high power. Semiconductor technologies are now regarded as being more mature since the semiconductor industry has well defined and accepted standards including standard cells and manufacturing technologies which are further enhanced by standard equipment. The increased complexity, maturation and scaling of semiconductor technologies have been accompanied by a trend of global coordination in which every device, starting from concept through specification, design, prototyping, qualification, manufacturing, packaging and testing all the way to final product, may go through many semiconductor companies, each of which focuses on a specific area. For example, an IC design house or fabless company focuses on IC design and a foundry focuses on wafer manufacturing.
In the semiconductor manufacturing business, a semiconductor foundry often makes its design system accessible to customers. In this manner, the customer can participate in the semiconductor design process. The design system available to the customer may include a design library associated with the foundry's particular manufacturing technology. It is of course very desirable that the customer's design be compatible with the foundry's particular manufacturing technologies. Usually, design cycles can be very long (for example, 3 months, 6 months, or even more). By the time the customer completes the design of a semiconductor device, it is very possible that the manufacturing technology employed by the foundry has changed from the time design was commenced. If the foundry's technology database is modified and upgraded after a customer has accessed a plurality of technical files used in the customer's design, then the final design by the customer may not be compatible with the foundry's technologies. Inconsistency between the semiconductor technology which the foundry customer uses to perform its design and the updated manufacturing technology currently employed by the foundry can be a significant problem.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method thereof that addresses the above discussed issues.